Research Alert: November 20, 2024

New Recap on Housing as a Social Driver of Health

Gateway has developed Rural Health Research Recaps to identify the key findings from the Rural Health Research Centers on specific rural health topics. The following Recap examines housing as a social driver of health.

Rural-Urban Differences in Housing Crowdedness, Cost Burden, Stability, and Quality

• From 2015 to 2019, higher proportions of urban residents reported housing cost burden (28.0%) or severe housing cost burden (12.6%) than their rural counterparts (21.0% and 9.2% respectively).
• A separate analysis found that from 2017 to 2021, proportions of households reporting housing cost burden increased to 32.7% for urban adults and 25.0% for rural adults. Importantly, this more recent analysis partially overlaps with the economic volatility of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• In 2021, rural residents were more likely to own their homes than urban residents (76.4% vs 68.6%). Rural residents were also more likely than urban residents to have lived in their homes for more than 20 years (26.9% vs 19.9%).
• In 2019, rural housing units had higher rates of heating problems, utility interruptions, missing roofing or external building materials, and broken windows, while urban housing units had higher rates of flush toilet breakdowns, electric wiring problems, and indoor water leakage.

Additional Resources of Interest:

• More FORHP-funded research on Social determinants of health
• More information from the Rural Health Information Hub's topic guide: Social Determinants of Health